A little bit country

After two weeks of cities, it was time to pack up the car and head north into the country. We picked up our rental car from the Santiago airport and 1 free upgrade later, we were off in our Mazda 6 with automatic transmission towards Vicuña, in the heart of the Elqui Valley. The drive was almost entirely on Routa 5 which is the main highway in Chile that runs almost the entire length of the country. 

Roberto and Alejandra's building at ElquiTerra

Arriving into Vicuña was a bit different than our previous locations. Gone were the bus stops and the crowds. This was country living. Jess found us an absolutely amazing place to stay in ElquiTerra. The place was absolutely fantastic. It was located up the side of the hill in the valley, just outside of the city.  It was a small B&B with only 3 buildings. One common building and 2 units with 2 bedrooms that shared a bath. The hosts, Roberto and Alejandra, were absolutely fantastic. The place was just very relaxing. There were two hammocks just outside of our bedroom which became our reading nook for many hours while were there.

The view of the valley from our B&B

Hammock reading at all times of day and night

As a small place, you quickly got a sense of the community. Roberto and Alejandra provided the most amazing breakfasts every morning. The eggs came from the neighbor, the jam from the lady up the street. The fruit was local. Everyone helped each other out. We really enjoyed our time here and found ourselves wanting to hang around the property more than exploring the valley.

The dogs watch the chickens next door

When we did manage to leave, we had a good time. The night we arrived we went into town to get some dinner and tickets for the observatory tour for the following night. The Elqui valley is known for it's clear skies and boasts about half a dozen observatories.  Dinner was at Bar Bilbania. It was definitely a local place with good beer and hearty food. We finally go to try the Chorillana, which is pretty much the Chilean version of poutine without the gravy. It was a hearty dish and we managed to almost finish it despite it's size.

Chorillana. French fries topped with steak, grilled onions and a fried egg

The next morning, in an attempt to work off the Chorillana, we rented bicycles from our place and set off to cycle to a local brewery, whose product we had sampled the night before.

Before the hills

We love to hike, but cycling is definitely not my thing. We took the road less traveled to get to the brewery and we paid for it. It was an undulating gravel road with heavy pockets of sand to kill any momentum you might be able to work up. There was also no mention of hills when Roberto was describing the route to us. 

The Guayacan Brewery was a lot of fun. It was small and the guided tour took about 5 minutes. They had to get one of the tour guides from another group that was there to translate for us. Short story is, a homebrewer's beer became popular enough for him to open a microbrewery to meet the town's demand.  We got a sample of their lager, pale ale and ipa before settling in to the beer garden to rest before biking back.

The Guyacan biergarten

We took the road more traveled on the way back which was a much easier cycle. There was only one big hill I was never going to make it up. We relaxed back at the ElquiTerra before heading back into town to head out to the observatory.

The star gazing was the main reason for coming to the valley in the first place. I'll never forget the sky we saw in New Zealand on New Year's Eve last year. When I read about the observatories during trip research, it was an easy choice of something to do. We chose to head to Observatorio del Pangue. It was a 30 minute shuttle ride from downtown on a dirt mountain road up and over the valley ridge to get to the next valley where there was no night pollution.

Sunset from the observatory

Even though our guide, Eric, was disappointed in the sky we got to see an amazing display.  They had these awesome laser pointers to identify the different constellations, planets and galaxies that we were getting a chance to see through the telescope. We got to see many different things including Venus, Mars, Uranus, a couple different Nebula, and even got to watch the international space station fly across the night sky!

Our telescope

Overall it was an awesome night and a late one. Here's an idea of what we saw. I was able to capture the stars from our B&B the next night. It includes Orion's belt.

My first crack at star photography

After the late night at the observatory and a filling morning breakfast, we were out on the trail again, this time in search of more drink in the form of pisco.  Our first stop was Capel, the largest pisco maker in the area where most everyone seemed to work. We ended up with a private tour of an empty facility because it was the Friday before Christmas! Our guide was very good in explaining pisco to us. Neither of us had a clue what it was despite having already had pisco sours earlier in the trip. It grew out of the valley's need for something stronger than just wine. So they took very young white wine (mainly from the muscat grape) and distilled it. The resulting alcohol was then aged in barrels from 8 months to 3 years. 

The distillation at Capel

There's two kinds of pisco. The 8 month variety is made more for mixed drinks like the pisco sour whereas the 3 year is more of a sipping drink like a whiskey. They are typically aged in french oak or american oak barrels. After we had tried all our samples and picked some up for Christmas, we were on our way to the next stop, pisquera Aba. 

Aba pisquera

Aba is a smaller outfit than Capel. They used the same grapes as Capel but could be more creative as a smaller place. This tour tested both our Spanish and our tour guide's English. The highlight of this tour was getting to sample some of the pisco straight from the barrel. It was extra potent and probably highly flammable at that point. Definitely put hairs on your chest! We picked up some more pisco from there as well and headed back to the B&B where we fixed ourselves a nice dinner and enjoyed that we had the place to ourselves for the evening.

Overall, we had a great time in the Elqui valley. It was very peaceful and relaxing place and a very nice change of pace from the hustle and bustle of Santiago. 

-Nick